Somerset Community College to Host Arnow Conference on April 5

The 11th annual Harriette Arnow Conference on Appalachian Literature and Culture will be held on Friday, April 5, 2013 at Somerset Community College. It will begin in the Harold Rogers Student Commons on the Somerset Campus North, located at 808 Monticello Street, Somerset, with registration at 8:30 a.m. The theme of the 2013 conference is Coal: Past, Present and Future.

The cost for the conference is $20 and $10 for students. The fee can be paid on April 5. In addition to the workshops and speakers, crafters will be on hand to demonstrate and display their work.

For more information about the Harriette Arnow Conference, contact Lynn Crabtree, English and Humanities Professor, at 606-451-6765 or lynn.crabtree@kctcs.edu.

About the Presenters

Mark Powell is the author of 3 novels: Prodigals, Blood Kin and most recently, The Dark Corner. Ron Rash calls him “The best Appalachian writer of his generation.” The recipient of National Endowment for the Arts and Breadloaf Writers Conference fellowships, as well as the Chaffin Award for fiction, Powell is an assistant professor of English at Stetson University.

Chris Green is Associate Professor of English at Marshall University. He has edited Coal: A Poetry Anthology (2006) and co-edited Radicalism in the South Since Reconstruction (2006), a collection of scholarly essays. Cary Nelson, author of No University is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom, said, "Green's book opens a window on a compelling and forgotten terrain in modern culture – the relationship between east coast modernism and the mountains of Appalachia. He deals powerfully with cultural interchanges and with Appalachia's own literary productivity, culminating in a beautiful chapter on Don West."

James Goode is well known as a creative writer, Appalachian scholar, poet, short story writer, writer and researcher on coal mining and documentary film maker. He is a professor of Humanities at Bluegrass Community and Technical College and is the coordinator of tutorial services.

Travis Martin, a former U.S. Army sergeant who served two tours in Iraq, is a driving force behind the veterans movement at Eastern Kentucky University, whose vet population has more than doubled since 2010, to more than 1,200.He is a Somerset Community College alumnus and is editor of The Journal of Military Experience and the founder of The Military Experience and Arts Symposium. Martin’s work has recently been featured in The New York Times. Martin teaches at EKU and is completing his doctorate at the University of Kentucky.

Wanda Fries, professor of English at Somerset Community College, was born in Chevrolet, a coal community in Harlan County. The granddaughter of coal miners, Wanda's family left Harlan in the out-migration during the fifties and settled in Pulaski County. She is the author of Ash Grove, set in Eastern Kentucky coal country, and Cassandra Among the Greeks, a book of poetry. She is the recipient of a Breadloaf Scholarship and Kentucky Arts Council fellowships. Her new novel In the Absence of Angels will be released this spring.

Tom Arnow, the son of Harold and Harriette Arnow, grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His extensive educational portfolio includes degrees from McGill University, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and the University of Texas at Austin, from which he earned a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Among other roles, he has served as a Programmer Analyst, Senior Research Engineer, and a college professor. He currently resides in San Antonio.